1981 S3 V8 conversion

[hilly]

Got a bit more done on the Steering today.

Carrying on where I left off the next job was to weld the mounting brackets together.

The peddle box mount was first, hack up all the bits of metal till they roughly fit together and then clamp in place.

Time for a bit more of my crappy welding (I really should go and learn how to do it properly).

Bolt the resulting mess onto the new steering column.

The long bolt and adjuster nut will be replaced with an alloy spacer, this is just to get the fit correct.

Next up was the front mounting brackets, The new column really needs to bolt onto the existing tabs on the Lotus cross beam.

To do this I'll use 2 steel pillars drilled to accept an M10 bolt and then weld them onto the mounting plates I made earlier.

Here they are bolted in place.

I then needed to large the holes in the brackets to fit over the pillars.

Then put everything in place, hold in position using a trolley jack, check it all lines up and then weld everything up together.

I hate welding stuff in the car, I always feel like it is going explode in a huge fire ball......

With the new column now firmly screwed to the car we now need to make the spline on the new electric column fit to the Lotus UJ on the car as they are different sizes.

To do this I was originally going to use the bottom section off my old column, but as luck would have it (well for me anyhow) GregWO discovered his was broken and after buying a new one sent the bit I needed over from America, so a bit thanks goes to him

The bottom section I am going to weld to the new one.

After a little bit of trimming here is what I needed from Greg's old column.

Next I got the clamp off the new column and made up an alignment tool to keep it all straight while welding.

This tool is made out of aluminium so it won't accidentally end up being welded on.

I removed the bearing and plastic casing from the spline to prevent heat damage during the welding.

A bit more welding and it all bolts together.

Now the moment of truth, does it all go back together and is any of it in the right place............

Here you can see the position of the motor on the new column, plenty of room.

Here is the gubbins in the peddle box area (you need to tilt your head to the right for it to make sense) and as you can see, all good here for clearance.

After all this carnage the steering wheel has only ended up 10mm lower, not much I can do about this as the new column is a fair bit bigger.

With this all done and tested (yes it does all still turn the front wheels....) I can get the brackets powder coated and then have a go at sorting out the wiring to make the magic happen.

Hilly

[Günter]

Hilly , that's all fantastic -but i thought you would also "invent" an adjustable steering column instead of an electric power-steering. The main problem of the esprit is the not right to fit steering for the taller persons... .

Anyway, to reduce the loss of power from the engine. And swap over to electric power assisted systems instead of hydraulics is a great advance!

[hilly]

Time for a bit of an update on the power steering.

Sorry no pictures this time as there isn't much to photograph.

I got the brackets painted and all the mechanicals are bolted back into the car.

I have spent pretty much most of the last 2 weekends adjusting the wiring to make the Vauxhall switch gear on the electric column work the on the Esprit, not an easy job without a wiring diagram.

The dipped/main beam caused the biggest headache as the old Lucas indicator stalk carried the current for the outer headlight bulbs (hence you get a lot of burnt out indicator switches on 'G'cars) where as the Vauxhall stalks are no where beefy enough to do this. This required a pair of relays to be added to prevent the switch from melting.

Other than that it eventually all worked it's self out with the exception of the single windscreen wipe function. The Vauxhall wiper switch just can't mimic the old Lucas one so I'll have to make up an interface box to do this which will also allow me to add an intermittent wipe function.

With the switch gear sorted all that was needed was to wire up the ECU for the column and then start the car and test it out to see if all the effort was a waste of time.

And the answers is..............

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Success !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is now possible to turn the steering wheel from one lock to the other while the car is stationary with just 1 hand, amazing.

The column is totally silent in operation, I haven't a clue how it works (it does and that is the important bit) so I am tempted to buy another column to take to bits to figure it out.

The effort required to turn the wheel when the car is not moving is about right, not too light.

Don't know what it is like to drive as there is still a bit of work required to get it all back together again.

All round I am pretty pleased so far.

Just need to crack on and get it driving again.

Hilly

[Bibs]

Nice work dude, good to see it's working just right. Love the on/off too, I'm not a fan of power steering in a performance car but can see the benefits at low speeds.

What's next for the mutant? JATO?

[hilly]

[quote name='G

Edited April 21, 2008 by hilly

[Simon350S]

VERY WELL DONE MATE.....

When I move in to my NEW house with Lisa I'll have more time to work on the old girl hopefully.....!!!!

Simon

[Günter]

Simon! a new house [probably with stable beds] and "a Lisa" -and you want to work on an Esprit ?

I think there are more interesting things to do...

[Simon350S]

LOL cheers mate.... I completely agree with you.....!!!!

Simon

[Günter]

yes!, make some handbuild furniture for shoes, clothes and other things.... .

[hilly]

I have to agree with G

Edited April 28, 2008 by hilly

[hilly]

Time for a bit of an update.

The power steering is all in and working and I have managed to re-assemble the dash as well.

I got hold of a Vauxhall surround for the column (tip here for anyone doing a electric column conversion, just buy the surround from a dealer as it is only

[M Blur]

Hilly - as a tip - source a ceramic blower fan used for nascar - they are ideal for cooling down very localised points, compact, light and very durable.. def my tip - much faster rpm and you can take a ducting from elsewhere and feed through..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2-NASCAR-TY...7QQcmdZViewItem

and if you only need 1 then I'll give you half for the 2nd..

you're welcome old boy

Jon

Edited April 28, 2008 by M Blur

[hilly]

Not sure how I would go about fitting one of those ???

I intend to use a 120mm x 120mm axial fan bolted to the back of the oil cooler (with a fabricated cowl) which will move 190cf/min which is not far off those fans on ebay.

Thanks for the tip though

Hilly

[jonwat]

To cure your cooling problems, have you considered fitting a smaller waterpump pulley to spin the pump faster???

Cheers,

John W

PS Amazing work, keep it up.

[hilly]

To cure your cooling problems, have you considered fitting a smaller waterpump pulley to spin the pump faster???

Cheers,

John W

PS Amazing work, keep it up.

That is one of my options.

The trouble is that the water pump is run from the timing belt so I would need to first pull the engine to get at it and then re-time the whole cam drive once the pulley is reduced in size as the cams won't line up..

I haven't yet had a look at the pump so not sure if I can get the pulley off to either machine it down or make a new one.

I would certainly prefer this option to fitting an electric pump though.

Hilly

[GasketsGone]

Hi Hilly (great work on your beast btw)

For expansion tanks if space is tight (obviously with that huge lump it is!?) perhaps you could use the Lotus trick as per the V8 Esprit - they placed one outside the engine bay inside the rear wheel arch......????????????????????????? just a thought.......

anyway...cheers, and keep up the good work - it really is astonishing what you have achieved...

regards

jim

[hilly]

That's exactly how I intend to do it Jim, though probably not in the wheel arch.

I have got my eye on a couple of locations in the engine bay.

I will make up some cardboard mock-ups before getting the winner made in alloy.

Hilly

[silverfrost]

Good work mate on the steering,

As for the rest of the problems i look forward as always to seeing your fine engineering

solutions, Hopefully the rad on mine will do the job as its standard s3 still, but i will

most definatly get myself round to putting a fan on the oil cooler sems a very good

idea

As for the expansion tank i had a feeling we would have a problem for some

reason, its a shame because they look very tidy where they are,

I think i will invest in a nice smart custom jobby as not to spoil the engine bay,

As for the water pump chap, im just stabbing in the dark here but as your

engine had not long had a belt change before the engine came out,

try and chase up the last owner as it is normally standard procedure now on the belt

change on the audi v8s to do the belt, water pump, tensioners and idler wheels!

Take it easy and keep up the great work mate, regards danny

[hilly]

Update time

I got myself a big fat 12V fan to go onto the oil cooler, this fella in fact -

It a 19W fan and the spec sheet says it can shift up to 700m3/hour so should be good enough.

Now this is not an environmentally sealed unit so it probably won't last long before the elements get it, but it should show if the idea is worth a more permanent solution.

Now just to prove I am as much of a chump as the next man, I decided it would be a stellar idea to test the thing out on my work bench using a power supply.

Fired it up and it don't half shift some air, the only problem was it also flew off the bench at about 50 mph.

My instinctive reaction was..... you guessed it, try and catch the bloody thing which I did, trouble was there were not guards fitted and the fan blade spin at 4000rpm.

So I now have a nice big hole in my right thumb where a blade took a chunk out of it, ouch!!!!!

Anyway, next I made up a bracket to fit it to the back of the oil cooler.

Here it is fitted to the car, I have wired it into the radiator cooling fan circuit so it only comes on when the car isn't moving.

It does a great job of getting the oil temperature down when operating, but it doesn't fix my idle temperature problem (not that I really thought it would) so I need to sort that out.

I have had a look at making the water pump pulley smaller to speed up the pump, but it is pressed on so not really do-able.

I took the water pump off the wrecked engine and the vanes on the impeller are widely spaced so an electric pump will be able to pull the extra flow through it even when running, so an electric pump it will have to be.

The the favorite electric pump is a Stewart EMP, it is not cheap , but it has a good flow through design (ie won't imped flow if the mechanical pump flow more at high revs), only trouble is finding a UK supplier, the search continues.

Hilly

[Günter]

as the fan does only came on with the car parked -would it not be better if the air flow is not blocked by the fixing structure [the aluminum] . In case the car does move ?!

[hilly]

The ail will still flow through the cooler without the fan running as the cowl only blocks about 20% of the matrix, it is fundamentally no different to the cowl fitted to the water radiator on every Esprit and they work OK.

Hilly

[Günter]

20% ?!

OK, if you say so .

It looks a bit strange, and we all know that the Esprit with his radiators (especially V8) get in trouble sometimes...

[hilly]

The fan blades are actually bigger than the matrix on the oil cooler so it is only the bits in the corners that are covered, so 20% is probably close.

Seeing as there is no ducting on the oil cooler from the factory the flow through it is pretty poor anyway so this will make next to no difference.

Hilly

[silverfrost]

Good work Andy,

Let me know how you get on with your electric waterpump findings,

very interested to see how this one pans out out

regards danny

[M Blur]

Nice one Andy,

I have a similat trans heat exchanger with S-swept blades going into the 358 trans.. so only difference being the coolant pipes routing through the matrix.

Keep up the great work

Jon